20 January 2007: Racine, Britannicus
Matinee. American Repertory Theatre. Directed by Robert Woodruff. First performance 20 January 2007
This is the last production by Robert Woodruff, ART artistic director. I know no details about this departure.
The program note indicates that Woodruff has chosen this seventeenth-century tragedy by Racine to make a political statement about George W. Bush and his administration. If Bush and Cheney were to sit in on a special performance of this production, I think they would learn no useful lesson from it, anymore than they would if they were assigned a reading of the C. H. Sisson translation (the one Woodruff has chosen). The play itself, and Woodruff’s resolutely post-modern production of it, is something of a horror story, about intrigue, betrayal, and the abuse of power in the Rome of Nero. Woodruff wants us to see the modern analogy in the America of today, but neither George Bush nor we ourselves might readily see the resemblances, despite the banner stretched across the upper part of the stage, proclaiming in giant letters “EMPIRE CREATES ITS OWN REALITY.” Woodruff is said to have heard this statement, or words to this effect, uttered by Bush or someone in his administration. Bush would not remember having said it and would dismiss it as a cheap slander on his government. We, who may well remember Dick Cheney or someone quoted to this effect, feel that we are being unfairly led and would prefer to judge such correspondences for ourselves instead of having them thrust down our throats. I myself would much prefer to see a “straight” production of the play — which is highly dramatic and very skillfully wrought — in seventeenth-century costumes and then, as I exited the theatre, say to myself, “Well, now, this three-hundred-year-old play has some telling analogies for our own time.” That is, Woodruff makes us passive spectators of a spectacle that has all the answers already embodied in it.
That is, perhaps, a little unfair to a production that has some fine acting in it and, to its credit, plays the Sisson translation “straight,” at least. We don’t get here what we often get in theaters that pass for avant-garde; for example, “Britannicus, loosely based on the play by Racine, with additional dialogue by William Shakespeare and Robert Woodruff.”
But, having allowed that much, we understand that after that it is all Woodruff’s show. This is a modern dress, eclectically designed production. Costumes range from Bergdorf Goodman to Army Surplus, each costume telling us about the character it clothes but indicating little or nothing about the social milieu in which the character travels. For example, the heartless mother of Nero and Britannicus, Agrippina, is dressed in a series of sumptuous, glittering designer pieces; Nero wears metrosexual stylish casuals; Britannicus wears determined grunge; Narcissus prefers Middle Homeless style; and Junia could be mistaken for a college sophomore. The set has two parts, “O